A Tester Walks Into A Bar...

A Tester Walks Into A Bar ... Andrew Horgan January 20, 2021

March 09, 2026 · 4 min read · Testing Guide

A Tester Walks Into A Bar ...

Andrew Horgan
January 20, 2021

A tester walks into a bar. They order 1 beer, 0 beers, 9999 beers, and an orange - or so the jocularity is told. But how do testers handle scenario with chiliad of permutations? What ’ s the most efficient use of clip and energy when faced with highly variable scenarios, and what do they seem like in mabl?

When looking at a scenario with several thousand permutations, it ’ s key to define your goals before even developing a testing scheme: do we need full test coverage, or are we just looking to test the functionality of calling a permutation? Are there high value permutations we require to examine? Some hypothetical cause: & nbsp;

Search a sample

In the first hypothetical, we ’ re testing the lookup functionality of an e-commerce site. In this scenario, prove every permutation would be costly in terms of both time and energy. A likely access would be to select a few key terms to test the scenario with and potentially rotate our test cases establish on seasonal trends or best-selling products. In this exemplar, we ’ re prioritizing efficiency by using a modest sampling to quiz functionality as well as a few prioritized items.

Prioritize the middle of the bell curve

Our second case is a bit more complex. We ’ re a consulting group examine a government application with respective compliance pieces. A key requirement is a searchable county directory that can link users to county resources. To further complicate matters, this directory of counties contains over 200 county. For this example, let ’ s consider two try strategy, each of which are aimed at a specific goal.

Our first strategy is aimed at testing county with the eminent traffic with the goal of win feedback as rapidly as potential. In this scheme, we ’ ll guide advantage of mabl ’ s unlimited parallel test executing to create a exam case that utilizes a with the top 50 counties with the highest web traffic. Each row of our data table will contain a varying with the value of the county ’ s name, which we will use as a search condition for our application to locate the resources for that county. Next, our examination will validate the results by asserting against the expected bit of resources name for that county. & nbsp;

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With this strategy we can focus our efforts on our highest precedency county and our results will be usable very quickly thanks to bunk our examination in analog. This strategy prioritizes speed and efficiency, which is easier to determine since we had clear-cut criteria (traffic rates) for determining which county be most critical. Without data-driven testing, bunk tests for all 200 counties would have required more imagination. With that said, depending on priorities, testing all 200 counties in parallel is not only possible, but an incredibly easy way to validate a test with hundreds of permutations through increased parallelization.

Let ’ s consider a second strategy that would test all 200 counties in a more price effective manner. One approach we can take is to use a Javascript step in mabl to store a hardcoded array of 20 counties. Using a in our mabl test, we can iterate through this array and set a variable to the value of the regalia item at the power of our looping flow indicator. This step may look something like this:

 

After telephone up the resources available to the county research for from the array, we can corroborate the expected outcome and restart the loop with the next county while setting our establishment steps to continue on failure. To expand our test coverage, we can likewise opt to create 10 copies of this test, each containing 1/10 of the counties to essay within our hardcoded array. All 10 of these tests can be run in parallel to improve the efficiency of & nbsp; our run time. This scheme will ensure that we ’ re able to test all 200 permutations of this examination case. However, due to the duration of time needed to iterate through all 20 loops in our test, this strategy is less clip efficient compare to testing the top 50 counties. & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

With the full-range of testing available on the mabl program, it becomes critical to have data-driven strategies that can adapt to different goals. With our top 50 strategy, we prioritized efficiency; in the loop flow strategy, we prioritized test coverage.

Whether you ’ re testing a simple scenario with a few cases or a complex one with yard of variations, there ’ s no shortage of ways for mabl to solve the problem usable to originative examiner. At the end of the day, when we have clear goals, our prove scheme is improved. At mabl, we ’ re focused on giving you the instrument to embrace that maximizes your time and makes your product better.

See for yourself how data-driven automated tests work in mabl. Sign up for a free trial today!

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